Rutland Books - Pretoria

“Always walk out with a new adventure. Awesome book store with awesome people.”

Rutland Books - Pretoria

This is a second hand bookshop, situated in one of Pretoria’s older houses. 13 Rooms Filled with books!!! Unbelievably well organised!

It seems that the owners (husband and wife) are always busy unpacking boxes and boxes of books. Books have taken over their house. The husband, not ruefully at all, claims that they have even taken over the kitchen!

The friendly old house with its hardwood floors has the feel of Home. The snow white haired lady of the house is flitting like a little fairy all over the place, unpacking and organising and helping. She seems to know every one of the books they currently have and also the customers who have bought from her. We’ve shown her a picture of a particular book my friend was looking for … she immediately knew where “in “Room 3 a particular copy, specifically with a red cover”, was residing.

The thirteen rooms are organised according to genre. The variation ranges from romance to history to sci-fi … languages and geography and high literature … maths and engineering and everything thinkable in between. A book lover’s paradise!

The books are in good condition and well-priced. I’ve bought twelve books at R500! That is South African Rand (today 1 South African rand equals 0.052 British pound). You can come here to buy, sell or exchange books. If there is anything in particular that you are looking for, Alida will keep an eye open for it and attempt to find it for you.

What Alida and John do here is clearly not a business in the stricter sense of the word, it’s a work of love. A passion that has ran away with them and became this otherworldly bohemian lifestyle we all secretly dream about, and get to share with them for a moment in our busy ordinary lives. Walking into their house was meeting kindred souls.